Follow Sconch Blog

Current favourite yarns...

Current favourite books...

The Temperature is Rising...

06/01/2017 15:47

Temperature blankets - have you done one? We are all in a frenzy here with temperature blankets (well, if nothing else, when you sit and look at your 'warm' colours, you can dream of warmer climes...)

If you aren't familiar with a temperature blanket, the basic principle is to track the temperature of each day by crocheting or knitting a row of a blanket in a colour that represents that temperature. The end result being a beautiful blanket with a gradiated colour scheme (with no doubt some random shades in there - especially if you live in the UK haha!)

Charlie (from Crochet and Fairylights) has been working her magic again with colour packs, and we have come up with two colourways for your temperature blanket. One in a vintage themed muted colourway, with the shades drifting from a cold Silver through to a warm Plum; and one in a brighter mirrored colourway, which moves from pastel through to bold shades in a mirrored around the White. She didn't want a traditional rainbow pack, nor did she really want the traditional blue being cold and red being hot, so after a lot of playing round (including quite a few votes from the Craft'n'Cake ladies in the shop!), the two packs were created...

So, this is Charlie...

I asked her about her reasons for wanting to create a temperature blanket...

I was looking back on my memories on my phone not so long ago and it reminded me that I’d wanted to make a temperature blanket this time last year, but due to having a lot of projects already on the go (you know what we’re all like with our wips!) I never got the time to make one, so I decided that this year it’d not only be nice to make one but to choose the colours, make a pack and hope that you guys all love them as much as I do!

How do you choose your colours for blankets?

I’ve been told I have a natural flair for colour matching & choosing and I’m often asked how I choose the colours. That’s such a difficult question to answer as it’s never the same for any 2 projects! My first question is who the blanket is for, how old are they, what’s the purpose of the blanket, where will the finished project live (bedroom/lounge/nursery etc)? Then I tend to find out about their current interior design so I get an idea of their taste and style, and what they’ve pictured the project to look like and see if I’m able to match their vision. After that I’ll put some colours together, photograph them, sometimes make sample pieces, send them over and see what if anything needs tweaking, and eventually get hooking!

What is the best thing about creating?

I love the start of a new project, making something out of nothing, and creating an heirloom; a loved blanket to be passed down from generation to generation. I have quite a stressful job, and I work 24/7 with a variety of shifts; crochet is my little sanctuary, where I can step away from reality into a bubble and de-stress, relax and create something beautiful.

To help you with your temperature blanket, Charlie has already devised the temperature ranges for each shade, so that you have a handy guide to get you started...

Both Charlie and I are going to do this CAL/KAL (you can choose whether you knit or crochet your blanket!), each with a different pack. Charlie is going to use the Vintage pack, and I'll use the mirrored pack.

Charlie has decided to do squares for her blanket - the inner ring being the coldest temperature of the day, and the outer 2 rounds being the warmest temperature of the day.Charlie has worked out that she will do 360 squares (18 x 20 in the layout) leaving 5 days for a border and sewing in of ends!

I on the other hand, know exactly how bad I am at keeping up with CALs... so I've decided to make mine a little easier. I am going to do a ripple blanket, but instead of the daily temperature, I am going to track the average weekly temperature! Not least because if I recorded the highest and lowest, I'd have over 700 rows...and I really wanted to do more than one row a colour...so you can imagine the size of the blanket with 1400 rows! This way, I can do 2 rows per temperature, with the highest and lowest temperature recorded for each week. I just need to decide whether to make it a single bed or double bed size blanket...

You can follow both our blankets on our Facebook pages (Crochet and Fairylights and Sconch), as well as on here, as I will keep you up to date with a few blog posts!

We hope you like the two new packs, and we can't wait to see what you make! Make sure you post photos with #sconchandfairylightstempblanket so we can see your temperature blankets!

Sam Conway

About Me

I am a mummy and wife and obsessed with making things, learning new skills and teaching others. I run Sconch, an online yarn shop, as well as having a bricks and mortar shop in Braintree, North Essex. This blog is my place to rant and get free therapy as well as share my favourite things.